Classically Speaking

Classical music in West Virginia and Beyond

NPR Classical had this cute cartoon. It is a blatant shot at the so-called "minimalists" -a name not embraced by Glass, Reich, Adams, Riley, et al.

While I'm sure the majority of NPR listeners are fans of contemporary classical music, there are certainly people who have a very narrow focus as to what is or isn't part of the canon of approved classics.

Dare I call them out?

Philip Glass is especially volatile on our airwaves. After airing what I thought was a delightful symphonic piece by Glass, I was asked by a listener why I liked Glass and since I did, was there something wrong with my mind? I have been threatened with broken fingers (A joke of sorts) if I dare air another Glass piece. I have one loyal listener, despite how many time we have discussed (in a very respectable and civilized manner) why he thinks Glass is a charlatan and my counter argument to all that. I have also been told that I wasn't to threaten people with promises of playing more "long-haired music." Huh? The point of that comment eludes me.

The real truth is I don't care what anyone else thinks about Reich or Glass. I like it (and millions worldwide agree as well) and that's that. Taste, as the Romans so long ago pointed out, cannot be argued.

I have come to realize that classical listeners are glacial when it comes to accepting new things. They want what they already know and I'm fine with that. I am here to please, not to torture you.

The kernel of truth that lies within the NPR cartoon is twofold. First, the early works of Reich and Glass are very repetitive. I get why that bothers people, but Glass and Reich are so far removed from their early works. They have evolved their approach and fans have followed. Besides, I like repetition in music. Always have, always will.

Secondly, this joke represents the "all cards on the table" openly degrading attitude that some classicists have about this style of music. As if to say, even a parrot can produce this style of music. Tsk, tsk, I say.

We cannot fast forward 50 years and I could say, "I told you so!," but I am firm in my convictions that history will realize the value of this music, even if some listeners do not share that opinion now. I am right and I know it.

Francesca will be transmitted to 1900 theaters in 64 countries. Opera lovers in West Virginia at the Cinemark Theater at the Huntington Mall in Barboursville; Regal Nitro Stadium 12; Hollywood Stadium 12 in Granville/Morgantown and Greenbrier Valley Theatre in Lewisburg as well as Cinemark Theater in Ashland, Kentucky. Cinemark will show the encore performance on Wednesday, April 3, at 6:30 pm.

The Holy Grail, the cup that Christ used at the Last Supper, and the
spear used to pierce the side of Christ at Crucifixion are prominent symbols in
Parsifal, libretto and music by
Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Parsifal, Wagner’s final opera (1882),
is the Live in High Definition simulcast from the stage of the Metropolitan
Opera in New York this Saturday, March 2.
Because the opera simulcast has an approximate running time of five
hours and forty minutes, the opera will begin at twelve o’clock noon.

The outstanding
vocal cast includes Wagnerian (large voices) luminaries of today’s opera
world. Munich native heldentenor Jonas
Kaufmann sings the title role of Parsifal, the “innocent fool” who will find
wisdom and bring redemption.

Dresden native
bass Rene Pape will sing the role of Gurnemanz, a noble Knight of the Holy
Grail and Swedish baritone Peter Mattei will sing the role of Amfortas, leader
of the Knights, who suffers from an incurable spear wound.

The role of Kundry,
cursed to be a seductress for laughing at Christ on the cross in a former life,
will be sung by Swedish soprano Katarina Dalayman. “The thing I like best about Kundry is that
she is such a complicated character with a wide range of expressions both vocally
and scenically.” (Dalayman in Opera News).

Russian
bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin sings the role of the vengeful magician Klingson,
who has now joined the dark side after being rejected as a Knight.

Wagner called Parsifal a “festival play for the consecration
of a stage.” It was premiered at
Wagner’s own theater in Bayreuth Bavaria, Germany. To blend text, music and action into one
artistic whole was a lifelong goal of Wagner.

Do not expect a
string of memorable melodies, but do expect wonderfully dramatic orchestral
music played by the excellent musicians of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra
under the baton of Daniele Gatti. I dare
you to count the number of times Wagner uses the “Dresden Amen.” (Check your hymnbook.)

Anthony Tommasini
in his review for the New York Times writes “the Met debut for French Canadian
director Francois Girard presents Parsifal
in a post-apocalyptic setting…two barren sun-baked dirt-gray mounds are divided
by a river bed with just a trickle of flowing water, sometimes thick with
blood.”

Not for newbies,
neophytes or the faint of heart because of the length, Parsifal also makes a lasting impression on the audience as well on
cast members. My first experience with Parsifal was when as a freshman I was
conscripted to be a Knight in a production in the Indiana University Auditorium
on Palm Sunday. IU faculty members
Charles Kullman, Ralph Appelman, Roy Samuelsen and Margaret Harshaw sang the
major roles, Tibor Kozma conducted and Hans Busch was the stage director. We started in the afternoon, took a dinner
break and finished the opera in the evening.

Wagner lovers in
West Virginia can see the Met Live in HD simulcast of Parsifal this Saturday, March 2, at twelve noon at the Cinemark
Theater at the Huntington Mall in Barboursville; Regal Nitro Stadium 12;
Hollywood Stadium 12 in Granville/Morgantown; and Greenbrier Valley theatre in
Lewisburg, as well as Cinemark Theater in Ashland, Kentucky. The opera in three acts will be sung in German
with English subtitles. Cinemark will show the encore performance on Wednesday,
March 20 at 6:30 pm.

A hunchbacked jester, a
philandering duke and a fathers curse provide the impetus for the action in
the opera Rigoletto by Italian
composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901).

Usually set in sixteenth-century
Italy, stage director Michael Mayer has updated the Metropolitan Opera's new
production to Las Vegas in 1960. Think
of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack at a casino in Las Vegas. â€œWhat happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Rigoletto, a melodrama in three acts, is the live in high
definition simulcast from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera into select movie
theaters this Saturday, February 16, at 12:55 pm. The production will be shown in four theaters
in West Virginia: Cinemark Theater in the Huntington Mall in Barboursville;
Great Escape in Nitro; Hollywood Stadium 12 in Granville/ Morgantown; and
Greenbrier Valley Theatre in Lewisburg, as well as Cinemark Theater in Ashland,
Kentucky.

Rigoletto was premiered in Venice on March 11, 1851, to rave
reviews from the audience after some changes requested by the censors. The libretto (script) by Francesco Maria
Piave was based on the French playwright Victor Hugo's tragedy Le roi s;amuse (1832). The King of France was changed to the
fictional Duke of Mantua.

Tenor Piotr Beczala will sing
the role of the womanizing Duke of Mantua. One of the most famous operatic arias is the Duke's cavatina "La donna
`e mobile," singing of the fickleness of women.
Realizing that this tune would become popular, Verdi supposedly did not
give the music to the original tenor until two days before the premiere so that
the gondoliers on the canals of Venice would not hear the melody and sing it on
the canals before the opera audience had heard the aria.

Serbian baritone Zeljko Lucic will sing the
title role of Rigoletto, and soprano Diana Damrau will sing the role of Gilda,
Rigoletto's daughter. "Caro nome" is Gilda's famous aria.

Last May when I was teaching
voice as an exchange professor in Brazil, I read an amusing article on Rigoletto that said â€œIt has everything a
good opera should: rampant adultery, a
dreadful curse, corrupted innocence and one heck of a grisly ending. The same article gave the ten-second version
as â€œsarcastic adultery-abetting hunchback gets his comeuppance in a sack of
dead daughter. Moral: Lock up your daughters.

Verdi wrote beautiful music and
developed dramatic characters in this opera.
I highly recommend that you attend. You will remember the experience.
I remember clearly the first time I saw Rigoletto at Indiana University Opera Theater with my teacher
baritone Roy Samuelsen singing the title role.

Sung in Italian with English
subtitles, Rigoletto will also have
an encore performance at the Cinemark Theater in Barboursville on Wednesday,
March 6, at 6:30pm. The Met production
has an approximate running time of three and a half hours.